国际英语新闻：CIA "no longer" uses secret prisons: director

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "no longer" uses secret prisons to detain terrorism suspects and is working on a plan to close all of them, the agency's director said on Thursday.

    In a letter to the employees of the agency, CIA Director Leon Panetta said that in accordance with U.S. President Barack Obama's order to ban controversial detention and interrogation practices of the CIA, the agency "no longer uses secret sites" and he is proposing a plan to close all remaining sites of such.

    That would save up to 4 million U.S. dollars for the Obama administration, Panetta added.

    However, he also asserted that "the CIA retains the right to detain individuals in the short term and temporarily."

    "The CIA continues to aggressively pursue al Qaida and its affiliates," said the director.

    The revelation of the existence of a network of secret CIA prisons around the globe in late 2005 has sparked a global outcry that tainted the image of the United States during the tenure of former U.S. president George W. Bush.

    Soon after his swearing-in in January, President Obama announced a plan to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba within a year, and ordered a comprehensive review of the detention and interrogation policies on terror suspects.